Facebook says it’s now streaming more video than YouTube. To be able to make that claim, all they had to do was cheat, lie, and steal.

Facebook just announced 8 billion video views per day. This number is made out of lies, cheating and worst of all: theft.

All of this is wildly known but the media giant Facebook is pretending everything is fine, while damaging independent creators in the process. How does this work?

Facebook counts the “view” at the three second mark (whether or not the viewer has even turned on the sound) in the midst of a precipitous decline in retention. At that moment, 90% of people scrolling the page are still ‘watching’ this silent animated GIF. But by 30 seconds, when viewership actually could be claimed, only 20% are watching. 90% of people are being counted, but only 20% of people are actually “viewing” the video.